Design Inspiration – Yarn Bombing on Wall Street

New York City based artist Agata Olek spent Christmas day putting the finishing touches on a custom purple and pink crocheted sweater for Wall Street’s famous 7,100 pound bronze “Charging Bull” statue. She then spent hours stitching the sweater, with freezing fingers, to the 11 foot tall beast.

A peak at Olek’s website reveals that she is a talented and adventurous knitter, influenced by the recent craze among knitters worldwide to “yarn bomb” or “yarn storm” public places with colorful, humorous and unexpected knit art.

Olek, sends her warmest wishes. “This crocheted cover represents my best wishes to all of us. It will be a great, prosperous year with many wonderful surprises!”

The crochet covered Charging Bull is her Christmas gift to NYC, she says, and a tribute to the sculptor of the bull, Arturo Di Modica, who placed the bull on Wall Street just before Christmas of 1989.

Says Olek who couldn’t make it home to Poland for the holidays, “I wanted to make it for all those people who couldn’t make it to their families and for those people who don’t have coats and don’t have any money.”

But like much “guerrilla art,” Olek’s work was not on display for long. She says the kill-joy caretaker of the park tore it apart early in the morning. With all the snow that has fallen in New York since Christmas, I bet the bull wishes he’d been allowed to keep his sweater!